Myers' Random Thoughts and General B.S. Thread

In the spirit of "Mohican’s Miscellaneous Meanderings" only without the clever alliteration and unrelenting political and religious bias etc., I bring you "Myers' Random Thoughts and General B.S. Thread."

To demonstrate that this is NOT all about me -- you go first!

Maybe it's a topic marginally worthy of debate, but it doesn't deserve it's own thread.

Or maybe it's just whatever pops into your head.

Gripes and peeves are fine -- but why not just post something POSITIVE if it strikes your fancy?

Surely, there is something that you've just wanted to say here on WB, but there isn't the exact place to do it.

I've never paid much attention to posting my thing in the proper thread.

I know you don't and neither to I. But I figured some other folks may feel constrained.

Originally Posted by brianpatrick

That said, I did find a new mole today on my chest. I immediately thought maybe it's skin cancer��

Then a few minutes later I thought, well, if it's the bad kind, I'm probably already going to die of it. This made me feel a lot better about the whole thing.

Hah.

Reminds me of something that happened to me.

I was coughing a lot and my doc sent me for a chest x-ray. They told me I had quite a few spots on my lungs.

My doc said, if this was something, you'd have symptoms and you'd be close to dying. Don't worry about it.

But my wife was like, we need to find out what this is. A lung specialist said we needed to do a needle biopsy.

Not a small thing -- you have to go under. Plus, he said, if we can't get at it, we'll have to make an incision and go in there.

Of course, that's what they had to do -- plus they still had trouble getting to the spots on the lungs, so they had to do a lot of digging around and it turned into a big deal.

The result was I had to spend 4 days in the hospital.

But here's the thing. At the time we had an infant and a 2-year old. It felt like constant chaos. And there I was, in a quiet private room. I spent the whole time on drugs -- reading and watching TV, visiting with family and friends.

The only problem was it hurt to laugh. Really hurt. I had to tell my brothers and a couple of my friends to STOP saying funny shit. Other than that it was like a vacation.

In the end, the spots were some kind of tiny benign nodules. The coughing was a symptom of allergies. I got some kind of special nasal spray that I still use from time to time -- and problem solved.

There are actually bits of non-B.S. here and there throughout the forum.

I can't guarantee it -- but this is for 100%, unadulterated B.S.

I think you're not digging deep enough to make this thread a success. Okay, it's a derivative thread, yeah, but you'll need to post a few deeply misguided opinions disguised as potential truths to get the attention of the cool kids. Maybe some crazy conspiracy theories you actually think are true. Dunno, just trying to be helpful. Hey, maybe a good meme or two? You know, followed by a Breitbart piece. Or you could go with a Huff Post piece; those are always juicy.

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Hey, I’ll throw something in the mix. In the least it will be one more post on the thread.

I’ve been watching this series called “Through the Wormhole”. It's hosted by the king of sonorous speech himself - Morgan Freeman. It takes a look at the so-called “hard” questions like “Are there other dimensions”. A while back I watched an episode on black holes.

It mentioned a debate between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskin about what happens to information at the event horizon of a black hole. Hawkins said information is permanently lost, which flies in the face of the law of conservation of information, and Susskin argued that information is spread out and suspended across the entire event horizon.

I don’t think Hawking's position needs any explanation, but in case people aren’t familiar with Susskin’s (I’m no expert, so this is a lay-explanation a couple of months after seeing the show. In other words – don’t trust me):

Susskin suggests a thought experiment: two people are in a spaceship near an event horizon. Angie departs the spaceship and heads for the black hole, and Bob, chivalrous to the end, stays in there to record what happens. What do the two people each see?

Susskin answers that Angie, looking back at the ship, will see pretty much she would see if she were moving away from the spaceship anywhere else in space, but Bob would see Angie slow down and then stop entirely. He says this because the light emanating from Angie would be slowed down as she neared the event horizon, and when she was exactly on the event horizon the light would stop entirely.

Susskin goes on to say that as things slow down Bob will be able to see increasingly more things that were previously too fast to see, and these things will take up more space until, eventually, “Angie” is spread out across the entire event horizon. Some of you might have heard about the “Holographic universe” lines of thought? They’re based on this.

This allowed Susskin to claim that the law of conservation of information remained intact even with regard to black holes.

Now it’s only a thought experiment, so I’m willing to overlook the obvious flaws such as the fact that Bob won’t see anything if the light emanating from Angie is standing still, but I still have an issue with this argument.

I’m basing this on the following assumption: the radius of an event horizon is related to the mass of its black hole. Once Angie passes the event horizon and her information is stored there, her mass goes on to contribute to the overall mass of the black hole. If the black hole becomes more massive, then the radius of the event horizon shifts outward, swallowing up whatever information was there, and the law of conservation of information is still broken.

But, you might be thinking, information slows before it stops, and when the event horizon shifts outward it will “catch up with” slowly escaping information and that information will be stopped and suspended at the black hole. "Fair enough" I says, but what about when a very massive object enters on one side of a black hole?

As it approaches the event horizon the light information suspended there will be acted upon by the massive object’s gravity and will have a tiny window of opportunity to escape suspension at the event horizon, distorting the information held at the event horizon a little. When the massive object is half way in the event horizon it will have displaced (by pushing it in or aside) the information occupied by its mass, further distorting the information held. And finally, when the massive object is just inside the event horizon the gravity exerted at the event horizon nearby the object will be slightly greater than elsewhere, leading to another alteration in the information suspended there.

Over time many such distortions might occur, and information will absolutely be lost.

Thoughts?

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I mentioned an esteemed member of this site was convinced that long red lights were a conspiracy between government and the oil companies.

Can't remember where I read it -- maybe Psychology Today -- an article said conspiracy theories, like a lot of religious belief or a belief in the supernatural, are a coping mechanism -- they are way for people to deal with anxieties and loss of control.

Maybe I missed something -- but I feel like believing the most plausible explanation causes less anxiety.

So if there's an extra-long red light, or one the doesn't need to be there -- I'd chalk it up to poor planning by some local government bureaucrat, which in theory at least, would make it a problem that could be solved, as opposed to going up against the government and the oil companies.

Or maybe people feel more in control if they think they are in the know -- that they know the TRUTH -- and they aren't sheep like the rest of us saps who always take the government or "the mainstream media" at face value. (Which I don't BTW.)

eripiomundus -- I'm having trouble visualizing and understanding all that.

I'm betting it's me, not you.

Now, I'd watch that program, because these things interest me on a pop-science level -- but I'm betting that they used animation and infographics to illustrate what you're talking about. And maybe I'd get it...

Funny thing about me and science...

When I was little kid, starting at around 6 -- I was obsessed with science. Couldn't get enough of science books aimed at kids. All of it interested me -- biology, astronomy -- anything to do with nature -- the ocean especially. I remember wanting a microscope more than anything in the world. I collected specimens from outdoors, took things apart to see how they worked etc. Everyone was sure I was going to be a famous scientist.

Then for reasons I still can't explain, at around age 10 -- I mostly lost interest in all of it. My focus shifted toward history (the world wars were a big fascination) art and music. I've tried to piece it together -- why that happened, what was going on in my life -- but I always come up empty.

(the goblin showed up, read slowly through the posts and then felt the need to explain something seeing that the hipo had now asked him for his thoughts, thus relating "...so just in case you're wondering now, or if it's actually the case where you haven't noticed it already, both posters Myers and Brianpatrick are in fact the same person where indeed flyingtart could be that same person too, only that their schizophrenia forbids them from admitting the truth of it, that is either to themselves there, or to each other too, or to others around them for that matter...," in fact, the goblin suspected too that hipo's post had to be in essence something like "schrŲdinger's cat in quantum superpositions", where the two possibilities "there" or "not there" coexisted at the same time, whereupon the goblin suggested "...no for me there's only one reality perhaps, just one reality that only looks like different realities due to the different positions of the observers upon it, simply reality is ever its own observation of it then...")

Hey, I’ll throw something in the mix. In the least it will be one more post on the thread.

I’ve been watching this series called “Through the Wormhole”. It's hosted by the king of sonorous speech himself - Morgan Freeman. It takes a look at the so-called “hard” questions like “Are there other dimensions”. A while back I watched an episode on black holes.

It mentioned a debate between Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskin about what happens to information at the event horizon of a black hole. Hawkins said information is permanently lost, which flies in the face of the law of conservation of information, and Susskin argued that information is spread out and suspended across the entire event horizon.

I don’t think Hawking's position needs any explanation, but in case people aren’t familiar with Susskin’s (I’m no expert, so this is a lay-explanation a couple of months after seeing the show. In other words – don’t trust me):

Susskin suggests a thought experiment: two people are in a spaceship near an event horizon. Angie departs the spaceship and heads for the black hole, and Bob, chivalrous to the end, stays in there to record what happens. What do the two people each see?

Susskin answers that Angie, looking back at the ship, will see pretty much she would see if she were moving away from the spaceship anywhere else in space, but Bob would see Angie slow down and then stop entirely. He says this because the light emanating from Angie would be slowed down as she neared the event horizon, and when she was exactly on the event horizon the light would stop entirely.

Susskin goes on to say that as things slow down Bob will be able to see increasingly more things that were previously too fast to see, and these things will take up more space until, eventually, “Angie” is spread out across the entire event horizon. Some of you might have heard about the “Holographic universe” lines of thought? They’re based on this.

This allowed Susskin to claim that the law of conservation of information remained intact even with regard to black holes.

Now it’s only a thought experiment, so I’m willing to overlook the obvious flaws such as the fact that Bob won’t see anything if the light emanating from Angie is standing still, but I still have an issue with this argument.

I’m basing this on the following assumption: the radius of an event horizon is related to the mass of its black hole. Once Angie passes the event horizon and her information is stored there, her mass goes on to contribute to the overall mass of the black hole. If the black hole becomes more massive, then the radius of the event horizon shifts outward, swallowing up whatever information was there, and the law of conservation of information is still broken.

But, you might be thinking, information slows before it stops, and when the event horizon shifts outward it will “catch up with” slowly escaping information and that information will be stopped and suspended at the black hole. "Fair enough" I says, but what about when a very massive object enters on one side of a black hole?

As it approaches the event horizon the light information suspended there will be acted upon by the massive object’s gravity and will have a tiny window of opportunity to escape suspension at the event horizon, distorting the information held at the event horizon a little. When the massive object is half way in the event horizon it will have displaced (by pushing it in or aside) the information occupied by its mass, further distorting the information held. And finally, when the massive object is just inside the event horizon the gravity exerted at the event horizon nearby the object will be slightly greater than elsewhere, leading to another alteration in the information suspended there.

Over time many such distortions might occur, and information will absolutely be lost.

Thoughts?

"I'm with you Hippo", Grace answered, so tired and slipping into third like a comfortable dressing gown after a hard day. "My mother is on the event horizon", she explained, "but her particular black hole is dementia." And Grace considered that optical illusion that makes the onlooker believe the event horizon hasn't been reached - will never be reached. Always just ahead. "But she's there", Grace said firmly, "still spinning in its torque until all sense and memory jumble into meaningless chaos." And Grace subscribed to the theory that all that information had been stretched and warped then contracted and stretched again. And, like a necklace of pearls, it had snapped and every little gem scattered to the far reaches of that horizon - with no hope of regrouping. "No, not disseminating - but disintegrating", Grace said sadly, "No more likely to re-group and become whole than the can of ashes I scattered from a pier." And Grace realised that one day her Mum would just disappear - not that she would be remotely aware of her progress from the event horizon into the abyss. "I just won't be able to see her any more", Grace explained, "And she'll no longer be able to see me." Grace shook her head firmly, "No, information doesn't survive", she said resolutely, "But I have copies - archives of my own to refer to. And I'll replay her voice in my mind and reconstruct her wisdom at the times when I need it, because I have the formula to her thinking, so I can reproduce her equations - build on her legacy. " And Grace looked around at the photographs she so often spoke to and smiled. "No, they've all been lost to a black hole", she admitted, "and my ghosts are just the holograms that my mind creates because I just can't deal with the reality of black holes then."

eripiomundus -- I'm having trouble visualizing and understanding all that.

I'm betting it's me, not you.

Now, I'd watch that program, because these things interest me on a pop-science level -- but I'm betting that they used animation and infographics to illustrate what you're talking about. And maybe I'd get it...

Funny thing about me and science...

When I was little kid, starting at around 6 -- I was obsessed with science. Couldn't get enough of science books aimed at kids. All of it interested me -- biology, astronomy -- anything to do with nature -- the ocean especially. I remember wanting a microscope more than anything in the world. I collected specimens from outdoors, took things apart to see how they worked etc. Everyone was sure I was going to be a famous scientist.

Then for reasons I still can't explain, at around age 10 -- I mostly lost interest in all of it. My focus shifted toward history (the world wars were a big fascination) art and music. I've tried to piece it together -- why that happened, what was going on in my life -- but I always come up empty.

For me that happens when I focus too hard on one thing. I kind of wear it out and it becomes dull. Then I find something fresh to follow and do the same.

I'm unfortunately interested in everything, and I mean everything. As I walk along a street, for instance, I'll start wondering how road signs are made, or the way a tree gets twisted over time by chasing the sun across the sky in the same direction every day, or how many nutrients are extracted from the earth and thrown away every year when we mow the grass... I mean, we pay to plant the grass, pay to water it, pay to fertilise it, pay for fuel to chop it down, pay for the food to give us the energy to do all that, and throw it away. We're literally throwing away something that is taking the very substance out of our soil. We could at least feed some goats on it or something. These days we barely even play on it (apart from sporting fields, and even then only on weekends). It's the single most ridiculous economic practice in the modern world I think. But I'm getting myself off track.

Wanting to know everything leaves you with a diverse smattering of info, but no depth in any of it, which is why I say it's unfortunate. I've been pretty interested in the world wars as well. I can recommend a good series called Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. Not limited to war, but treats with the second WW and onward past Vietnam (I'm only up to episode 8 because that's all the guy who copied it for me gave me - so I can't say whether it covers Desert Storm). I'm getting the internet connected this week (I use a phone, but with limited data, so no downloads at present), so I'll be able to "buy" the other episodes.

I was going to try to explain my earlier post a bit better:

Susskin is a string theorist, so his thinking is "out there" to begin with. I’m guessing the part you’re not clear on is why Susskin thinks a person’s information will spread out over the event horizon? (By “information” he’s just referring to things like light reflected from Angie’s person).

In the program Susskin uses to a propeller to elucidate his idea: when we look at a fast moving propeller we can clearly see the central hub, but not the blades. However, if we slow the blades down they become perceptible, and the image we had of a central hub will appear to have grown (to include the blades). Susskin then considers that the end of each blade has another smaller propeller on it spinning parallel to the first. Again we can only see the central hubs - unless we slow the prop down. When we see the slowed-down blades their tips are slightly outside the circumference made by the first big propeller, so the size of the overall thing has grown again. He suggests that doing this an infinite number of times will lead to something of infinite size.

Susskin thinks the same thing would happen as Bob watches Angie approach the event horizon: the atomic/subatomic processes that are happening too fast for us to see will become visible as the light emanating from them is slowed by the gravity of the black hole, and Angie will appear to grow as far as Bob is aware. If you’re familiar with fractals I think it will give you an idea of what he’s on about: as you look at the edge of an unbounded fractal you think you can see an outer boundary, but if you zoom in you’ll see that there are actually little projections sticking out that you couldn’t see at the initial magnification (this is analogous to slowing down the propeller), and the boundary you thought was there moves outward. Then you zoom in again and find the same thing happens. If you zoom in an infinite number of times the fractal will become infinitely large.

Susskin argues that as Angie crosses the threshold of the event horizon the light emanating from her will be stopped – an event horizon is the point beyond which light cannot escape a black hole’s gravity, so at that point light travelling directly away from the centre of the black hole will be slowed to zero velocity.

If light emanating from Angie is suspended at the event horizon, then information pertaining to her is stored there. The program I watched didn’t adequately (to my mind at least) explain why Susskin thinks Angie’s information would spread across the entire event horizon, but they said it was similar to some of the thinking involved in string theory. There’s exactly zero evidence for string theory after more than 40 years of searching, apparently, so that might be a fair reason to suspect Susskin is wrong on this one.

Last edited by eripiomundus; 09-20-2017 at 05:52 AM..

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"I'm with you Hippo", Grace answered, so tired and slipping into third like a comfortable dressing gown after a hard day. "My mother is on the event horizon", she explained, "but her particular black hole is dementia." And Grace considered that optical illusion that makes the onlooker believe the event horizon hasn't been reached - will never be reached. Always just ahead. "But she's there", Grace said firmly, "still spinning in its torque until all sense and memory jumble into meaningless chaos." And Grace subscribed to the theory that all that information had been stretched and warped then contracted and stretched again. And, like a necklace of pearls, it had snapped and every little gem scattered to the far reaches of that horizon - with no hope of regrouping. "No, not disseminating - but disintegrating", Grace said sadly, "No more likely to re-group and become whole than the can of ashes I scattered from a pier." And Grace realised that one day her Mum would just disappear - not that she would be remotely aware of her progress from the event horizon into the abyss. "I just won't be able to see her any more", Grace explained, "And she'll no longer be able to see me." Grace shook her head firmly, "No, information doesn't survive", she said resolutely, "But I have copies - archives of my own to refer to. And I'll replay her voice in my mind and reconstruct her wisdom at the times when I need it, because I have the formula to her thinking, so I can reproduce her equations - build on her legacy. " And Grace looked around at the photographs she so often spoke to and smiled. "No, they've all been lost to a black hole", she admitted, "and my ghosts are just the holograms that my mind creates because I just can't deal with the reality of black holes then."

Sad to hear about your mum Grace. Dementia has been linked to degeneration in a few different brain regions. If you donít mind my asking, do you know which it is for your mother? I ask only because in certain cases there are things that can help slow the descent - provided she hasn't gone so far that slowing the descent would be cruel.

Doctors generally try to keep to prescription medications. They have their reasons: They can fall back on the system if something goes wrong; they wonít be giving what might turn out to be false hope to patients or their kin; they wonít be risking a court case if the patient happens to have an adverse reaction to a substance that isnít actually prescribed for their particular ailmentÖ and so on. But that means a lot of helpful, or potentially helpful, remedies are never mentioned to patients.

I could name a few, but it would be hit and miss unless I knew more about what's going on. The reason I know a bit about it all is because I hanged myself, was clinically dead for somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, then got revived. I ended up pretty brain damaged Ė could barely even talk Ė but I knew a bit about the brain from before the hanging, and even though doctors sent me home with no suggestions about what I could do to improve, Iíve come back to the point of fair functionality through using mostly natural things to tweak the levels of this and that in my brain.

When you get brain damage from lack of oxygen itís called Hypoxic Brain Injury, and some of the effects are similar to dementia. As I research this and that in search of ways to fix my own brain dementia often comes up, and I prick my ears because anything that can help dementia can help me. So although Iím no doctor, I've got a bit of info in this area, and Iíd love to help if I can.

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Kind of you Hippo - and thank you. Her lights have dimmed slowly, a couple of strokes not helping - but she has been slipping further away over a few years rather than months -and she's 83 now.

Actually, I penned my analogy for our Myers - because it's your post conveyed in human terms - and he's fluent and at ease with the language of humans and emotions ...writers so often being disconnected from the sciences but able to interpret a raised eyebrow at fifty paces.

__________________GRACE GABRIEL

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Yeah -- Grace, I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. That was a pretty heartbreaking read. Lovely, but very sad.

My mom had several small strokes that caused what they called vascular dementia. She didn't live long with it though.

I can only relate to a point -- because her memory loss wasn't really getting worse and it probably wouldn't have -- it may have even gotten better. She was fairly lucid -- pretty good long term memory, but trouble remembering day-to-day and was very easily confused and upset. Had some really good days though.

My mom could be a royal pain in the ass -- but I sure do miss her. She used to really get to my wife -- who always remained calm. And it almost always began with a certain phrase my mom used when referring to how my wife was raising our children:

"Well, if she were MINE, dear, I'd..."

I think once my wife once mumbled, "Well, she's not yours..."

P.S. -- you can imagine my mom saying that in an aristocratic southern accent -- the kind poorly imitated in "Gone with Wind." I was used to it -- but for everyone else, it made her occasional condescension that much more annoying...

eripiomundus -- I can relate on some level about wanting to know. My family used to tease me about what they called my "subjects." Even in my science phase, I would obsess over a certain thing and try to learn everything about -- then I would move on.

But a "subject" could be anything. Photography, painting and drawing, music/guitar etc. Whatever I was into, I would be thinking about it practically every waking hour. I was once diagnosed with ADHD. I may have it to some degree, I certainly have some of the symptoms -- and that's one of them.

Music seems to be the one constant in adulthood -- and even though I didn't have much time to devote to it for a few years, it was always in my brain. (I also panicked when I first got married and had a baby on the way and sold most of my gear. Uhg.)

Writing -- it's there, and I still dabble, after pursuing it pretty hard for a few years, but I can really only handle one creative pursuit at a time.

With work -- the ability to focus almost to the exclusion of everything has been mostly a good thing -- although I struggle with multi-tasking and switching gears -- sometimes to the point where it almost paralyzes me. Thank goodness for deadlines!

On top of all that, I'm curious about a lot of things and would consider myself a low-level autodidact. I really don't know how you can write -- or do anything creative without being curious about things -- especially about people and what makes them tick.

And yeah -- growing grass is ridiculous. Ha ha. The very last thing I imagined was living in the suburbs and having a lawn. I was living in an unfinished loft in the city, helping the owner to subsidize my rent -- and working on a deal to buy it at some point. I wanted to work and live there -- but then shit happened. When we moved, I got all caught up in the lawn -- trying make it look great -- it was ridiculous. Now it's just passable/not embarrassing. And it's huge -- so now I'm working on ways to landscape it to make it much, much smaller. It's been shrinking over the years, but I plan on taking more drastic action.

One thing I've always done is refuse to water it during shortages or the hottest part of the summer. What a waste! I reseed it every fall anyway -- so if some of it dies, no big deal, although it looks pretty shitty in the latter parts of the summer. I'm getting ready to reseed now -- a huge pain in the ass.

I think the explanation of your earlier post is somewhat clearer -- but I'm still a bit confused. I certainly appreciate the effort though. Iím going to see if I can find that doc somewhere and watch it. I read a synopsis and it looks pretty good.

In the spirit of "Mohicanís Miscellaneous Meanderings" only without the clever alliteration and unrelenting political and religious bias etc., I bring you "Myers' Random Thoughts and General B.S. Thread."

To demonstrate that this is NOT all about me -- you go first!

Maybe it's a topic marginally worthy of debate, but it doesn't deserve it's own thread.

Or maybe it's just whatever pops into your head.

Gripes and peeves are fine -- but why not just post something POSITIVE if it strikes your fancy?

Surely, there is something that you've just wanted to say here on WB, but there isn't the exact place to do it.

Well here is your chance!

Yeeeeee haw!!!

So you started your own thread - not to advance your own ideas, but to continue your theme of mockery?

__________________If you surrender a civilization to avoid social disapproval, you should know that all of history will curse you for your cowardliness - Alice Teller

If John of Patmos would browse the internet today for half an hour, I don't know if the Book of Revelations would be entirely different or entirely the same.

A new job, and switching from a mil spec flip phone to a I Phone 6 plus led to a change of wardrobe.

I got the "plus" because with sausage size fingers the keys on the standard I Phone or most other standard sized smart phones are too small.

With the flip phone, rough duty belt holsters/pouches/whatevers are still readily available. I tried a clip on carrier, the clip broke, and various holsters all failed.

While looking for new work pants I spotted some cargo pants by wrangler with a fairly heavy rip-stop denim. I bought two pairs, found that my supersized I-phone fits nicely in one of the cargo pockets, leaves the other one open for small note pad, pens, sharpies and usb flash drives.

I'll by one more pair - which will give me a pair Monday through Friday.

Another positive note - they (Wrangler Riggs Cargo Work Pants) are holding up well.

__________________If you surrender a civilization to avoid social disapproval, you should know that all of history will curse you for your cowardliness - Alice Teller

If John of Patmos would browse the internet today for half an hour, I don't know if the Book of Revelations would be entirely different or entirely the same.

I tried a new brand of beer (Redbridge) - or new to me. I guess it's "trendy" in that it's brewed from Sorghum and not wheat and thus is gluten free. Not that I care about gluten free.

The first was kinda meh, but my taste buds might have adjusted on the second beer (several days apart - for scientific purposes). The second was very pleasant. So it will go into my rotation.

I can't contribute to your beer conversation Mo - just grabbing your attention. (although, if your hair is lacking lustre, rinse it with beer for exceptional bounce and shine.)

I was wondering - can you access stats for the Beat - hitcount per month, number of new registrations, mean number of active members etc...

Ideally, a presentation complete with graphs showing our performance over the last six months would be ideal....|I'd really like tangible evidence of how the Beat is faring, as we seem to be pulling up from a fairly cataclysmic nosedive....

Can I make a prediction? I think WB will just disappear one day in the not too distant future. No notice, no warning, just caput. The reason I know this is it happened on another forum I belonged to. It started with an outage lasting a few weeks. Even the mods hadn't a clue what was going on and couldn't contact the site owner or any of the AWOL admin. Much to everyone's relief it gradually came back and then, just when the members had got over the shock and started to feel comfortable again, bang, this time gone for good.

I hope I'm wrong. Just don't get too comfy.

__________________I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

Can I make a prediction? I think WB will just disappear one day in the not too distant future. No notice, no warning, just caput. The reason I know this is it happened on another forum I belonged to. It started with an outage lasting a few weeks. Even the mods hadn't a clue what was going on and couldn't contact the site owner or any of the AWOL admin. Much to everyone's relief it gradually came back and then, just when the members had got over the shock and started to feel comfortable again, bang, this time gone for good. I hope I'm wrong. Just don't get too comfy.

("...it's why one reposts one's posts across forumland I guess, well if one cares for them I mean..." observed the goblin knowing that it had happened, in much the same way as flyingtart had related there, often enough to him too, but then adding "...though come to think of it everything in dailylife is all just "an assumption of certainty" anyway, so one lives on from day to day and banks against that inevitable end therein, in short one trusts life and one lives on where there is enough quality of life to do so, meaning one doesn't drown before the boat sinks, same thing with my posting then, in that I trust this forum with my posts, yes, but those posts that I feel merit keeping I post to elsewhere too, just being that process of air/edit/backup again...", where most folks probably thought that the goblin was mad to have no motive to post really, no they themselves needed some motive to post perhaps, where the goblin in his anonymity could have no motive to post, instead he smiled "...well now, if there's no motive then whatever results is just in your nature I guess, where what you then post after understanding that it is indeed "motiveless" is just you by it..." and which point the goblin thought for a second and restarted "...for here you are faced with a little slot that offers you a plot now, an adventure if you like, and rapport if you careful how you correspond with others too, whereas medusa there would set her minions in all that thick published stone instead, so it's this process of air/edit/backup isn't it, and the result are those livewriters you get to know by their posts, where these forums are just the venues that spring up and die off like so many trees in a forest for forumland, yet even so, we post on still, such is our nature...")

Can I make a prediction? I think WB will just disappear one day in the not too distant future. No notice, no warning, just caput. The reason I know this is it happened on another forum I belonged to. It started with an outage lasting a few weeks. Even the mods hadn't a clue what was going on and couldn't contact the site owner or any of the AWOL admin. Much to everyone's relief it gradually came back and then, just when the members had got over the shock and started to feel comfortable again, bang, this time gone for good.

I hope I'm wrong. Just don't get too comfy.

You tell me that AFTER I've wallpapered and bought scatter cushions and spider plants?

("...it's why one reposts one's posts across forumland I guess, well if one cares for them I mean..." observed the goblin knowing that it had happened, in much the same way as flyingtart had related there, often enough to him too, but then adding "...though everything in dailylife is all merely "an assumption of certainty" anyway, just one lives on from day to day and banks against that inevitable end therein, in short one trusts and one lives on where there is enough quality of life to do so, yet above all one doesn't drown before the boat sinks, same thing with my posting then, in that I trust this forum with my posts, yes, but those posts that I feel that merit it I post to elsewhere too, just being that process of air/edit/backup again...", where most folks probably thought that the goblin was mad to have no motive to post, no they themselves needed some motive to post, where the goblin in his anonymity had no motive to post at all, instead he smiled "...well now, if there's no motive then it's just in your nature, where what you then post after understanding that it is indeed motiveless is just you by it..." and which point the goblin thought for a second and restarted "...for here you are faced with a little slot that offers you a plot now, an adventure if you like, and rapport if you careful how you correspond with others here, whereas medusa there would set her minions in all that published stone instead, so the process is air/edit/back isn't it, and the result are those livewriters you get to know by their posts, where these forums are just the venues that spring up and die off like so many trees in a forest for forumland, yet we post on still...")

Too nomadic an existence for a home lovin' gal like me.

If the plug gets pulled here, I'll have to start watching Coronation Street...